Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A few years ago the Department of Executive put together some pricing samples for basic goods across the Northwest Territories. A bag of flour, 2.5 kilograms, costs $4.15 in Yellowknife, $7.17 in Fort Simpson, $7.79 in Fort Good Hope, $8.25 in Inuvik and $8.94 in Tuk. I don’t know exactly how much flour costs in Fort Providence, but the good folks at the Bureau of Statistics tell us that our prices are at least 21 percent higher than Yellowknife’s.
If we’re going to make bannock, we need to mix the flour with lard and water, maybe some sugar. If lard costs $4 or $5 in Yellowknife, it will probably cost at least $10 in our most remote communities and no less than $7 elsewhere. If you want to get fancy and make your bannock with milk, you had better be rich, because a four-litre jug of fresh milk costs as much as $13.29 in some communities. At that rate, you won’t have any money left over for Klik. I hope you can cook your bannock over a campfire or woodstove, because by now you’ve already spent up to $18 to $20 in some places just for some bannock and you still haven’t made tea.
We all know that power bills are going up and up in all our communities. In Inuvik and Norman Wells natural gas has been shut off, so you better not switch your stove on at all. With the cost of living this high, if it costs a person most of their paycheque just to make bannock, we may have to change the way we live in the Northwest Territories.
Deh Cho communities are fortunate in some ways because we have a viable source of biomass surrounding our communities, we can grow our own food and we know how to hunt. When it comes to other basics like flour, sugar and Red Rose tea, they are difficult to produce locally and we are running out of options.
People in our communities are asking the GNWT to do all they can to reduce the cost of living and find creative solutions to make prices for our basic goods more reasonable for Northerners.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
